Quacquarelli Symonds (QS), a London-based company that ranks higher education institutions, has released the latest edition of World University Rankings (WUR) 2022 on Tuesday, 8 June 2021 or Wednesday, 9 June 2021. This year Universitas Gadjah Mada (UGM) is still ranked 254th, retaining a spot among the top 250 leading universities worldwide. With these results, UGM remains the best university in Indonesia.
QS bases its rankings on four major criteria – academic reputation, employer reputation, citations per faculty, faculty-student ratio, international faculty, and international students. UGM’s overall score has increased from 37.4 last year to 38.3. UGM’s scores improved in areas including academic reputation by 6.46% (from 44.9 to 47.8) and employer reputation by 2.78% (from 43.2 to 44.4). It is worth noting that the QS WUR for 2022 is announced in 2021 using institutional data collected in 2020.
Despite making progress in several areas, UGM faces challenges due to force majeure conditions. The Covid-19 pandemic inevitably affects achievements in the QS WUR 2022. Scores fall in the international faculty and international students’ indicators due to travel restrictions and the transition of the educational process to being almost completely online since last year.
Nevertheless, despite the challenges of the pandemic and competition from 1,185 selected universities worldwide, UGM can continue to be competitive on the list of the 250 best universities. This achievement is the result of the hard work of every individual associated with UGM. UGM has made various internal improvements, including increasing the number of faculty members, accelerating digital transformation of education by organizing courses (mostly online) for foreign students, supporting research, and establishing cooperation with partners both domestically and internationally.
Having understood all possible challenges, the university must strengthen synergistic cooperation between stakeholders to face an increasingly challenging future. UGM remains firm in its mandate to work for humanity and the nation’s development. The ranking is certainly not the goal, but it can provide information on areas that still require hard work for improvement. Therefore, UGM is committed to developing various innovations based on Tri Dharma (Indonesia’s three pillars of higher education) to exert an increasingly positive impact to the community. Consequently, the competitiveness as indicated by QS WUR will also increase.
Author/Translator: Laily